Jadav "Molai" Payeng (born 31 October 1959) is an environmental activist[1] and forestry worker from Majuli,[2] popularly known as the Forest Man of India.

In 1979, Payeng, then 16, encountered a large number of snakes that had died due to excessive heat after floods washed them onto the tree-less sandbar.

[6] There are several thousand trees, including valcol, arjun (Terminalia arjuna), ejar (Lagerstroemia speciosa), goldmohur (Delonix regia), koroi (Albizia procera), moj (Archidendron bigeminum) and himolu (Bombax ceiba).

[11] In 2013, poachers tried to kill the rhinos staying in the forest but failed in their attempt due to Molai who alerted department officials.

[12] Jadav Payeng was honoured at a public function arranged by the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University[14] on 22 April 2012 for his achievement.

He shared his experience of creating a forest in an interactive session, where Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh and JNU vice-chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory were present.

A locally made documentary film, produced by Jitu Kalita in 2012, The Molai Forest,[16] was screened at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

[20] It was awarded the Best Documentary prize at the Emerging Filmmaker Showcase in the American Pavilion at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

[27][28] Jadav and the Tree-Place has been translated into 39 languages,[29] published in print by Pratham Books in 8 Indian languages,[30] and has won the Digital Book of the Year prize at the Publishing Next Industry Awards, 2016,[31] and the Best of Indian Children's Writing: Contemporary Awards, 2019.